Dungeons & Dragons Supplement Adds Innovative Striving Mechanic to Ability Checks

A new Dungeons & Dragons supplement adds an innovative new mechanic to turn failed ability checks [...]

A new Dungeons & Dragons supplement adds an innovative new mechanic to turn failed ability checks into successes, but at a cost. A major tension in the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons is the balance between narrative and the mechanics to determine the success or failure of an action. When planning out an adventure, many Dungeons & Dragons adventure designers and DMs inadvertently create "bottlenecks" - places where the story can't advance without the players making a successful ability check. These bottlenecks range from trying to open a locked door in order to advance in a dungeon to interrogating a witness for clues about an enemy plot. The narrative aspect of Dungeons & Dragons requires players to make a successful ability check in order for the story to advance, but that ability check still relies on a random dice roll that often results in failure.

While failed ability checks can lead to innovative player choices, veteran D&D designer JVC Parry and Molly Meadows have come up with a new mechanic to help mitigate those "bottlenecks" in narratives. Striving For Success introduces a "strive" mechanic, in which a player can turn a failed ability check into a success in order to advance the storyline. Striving offers players a chance to accept a negative consequence in order to turn a success into a failure. For instance, if a player fails an Ability Check to pick a lock, they can strive for success and open the lock, but at the cost of breaking their thieves' tools.

It's up to the DM to determine when a player can "strive" on a failed ability check, and Parry and Meadows suggests limiting striving to checks where the result of the player's roll is within 5 of the DC, there is no pressure for a player to succeed on an ability check, or when a player has unspent inspiration. The supplement also suggests several consequences for striving, such as loss of hit points or hit dice, a loss of tolls or equipment, a loss of time or actions, increased exhaustion levels, an applied condition, or some sort of narrative consequence. The supplement also provides examples of specific consequences for certain kinds of ability checks to further inspire the players.

Ultimately, Striving for Success provides players with another tool for DMs to use to help advance the stories. While not revolutionary to Dungeons & Dragons (DMs often introduce alternative consequences for failed ability checks instead of blocking a narrative path forward,) Striving for Success is a handy formalized ruleset that puts more narrative power in the players' hands.

Striving for Success is available on the DMs Guild for $4.95.

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